Can I just say This? Thank you 2020!

 

Can I just say This? Thank you 2020!

 A Message from Your Happiness Ambassador! 

I know in many ways it might seem odd to say thanks to a year that for lack of a better term “sucked” royally most days, and don’t worry, I’ll spare you the recounting of the many ebbs and flows of the year. But I have to say for all the challenges and all the bad none of it was without its equally positive moments. We may have had to search for them but find them we can if we look hard enough. We may have to look hard and refocus our minds to find them, but I can assure you, they are there. 

 

As we begin to recap and analyze all that occurred in the year of 2020, of being mentally, physically, financially, and spiritually challenged. I can’t help but to also reflect as well on all the good in my own life that the year 2020 produced. I cannot help but want to bring to the forefront all the lessons I have learned. I cannot help but feel well…thankful for my life in so many ways and on so many levels because there really were moments that redefined what joy, kindness, love, and happiness means to me as a woman. 

 

I have to consider first and foremost that I am alive, and I am breathing today. I am here and I am present, and I have choices. In of itself this is a great if not one of the greatest accomplishments that I have achieved this year. What a truly beautiful and wonderful thing it is to be thankful for living, is it without a doubt a spiritual serendipity! 

 

I have to also consider the connections I have rebounded and rebuilt with my family. We had over the years done what most families do... scattered across the states and lived our lives. But through all that time remained our core foundation to return to what we affectionately refer to it as “the farm”! Not a working farm any longer but still our 48 acres of land in upstate NY has always brought my family together when we needed to be reunited. It has always beckoned us back when times were tough, and I think (looking back now) it’s because although we’ve been scattered at times the farm is, in all its glory and simplicity, what keeps us true to who we are as both individuals and as a family unit.

 

My grandparents bought this place with the thought of making it a place where their children and their children could always come to, and most importantly to know in your heart of hearts that you would be taken care of. That has not changed in 60 years and was an ever-present theme during this tumultuous year, and although the theme of the pandemic was distance, the farm brought us together. Many summer days it was just us…the family, the farm, the hope, the dreams, the love; for me, the farm did so much for us this past year.

 

It kept us safe, healthy, connected, human, and humbled. I know that this is what my grandparents wanted, and this is what we got as their gift from them and oh, what a blessing it has been and will continue to be as long as well let it.

 

Ironically, I also learned (albeit the ending was certainly not fairytaleish at all) to love again! To open my heart and my home to another and to lay bare feelings and emotions I was very happy with suppressing and burying along with their many times painful memories. But that was not what the universe had in store for me in 2020, no, the universe has a sense of timing and a sense of humor that sometimes we mortals simply do not get!

 

I will fully admit now that I still do not get it fully but what I do know is that-that experience has forever changed my life and not completely for the worse. It allowed me to reexamine my life’s direction and to redefine what family really and truly to me. It made me detach from self and ego, it forced me to be open and vulnerable, and beckoned me to let another’s life touch my own. It did…at a price in some ways yes, but it did…I felt, and it happened.

 

It also (unbeknownst to me at the time) was the catalyst for this next stage of my life where I have decided for a spell to tuck away my vagabond shoes and don a pair of more comfortably rooted bedroom slippers as I continue to rebuild and recreate my home, my space. I cannot say that the traveler in me is completely lying dormant, after all, I am a traveling nurse specialist.

 

…but my roots are being set and I am becoming more attached to the home I had spent years trying to uproot myself from. So… to that extent I am so happy and so blessed that love was there to guide me. You see, its not always the person that is attached to the actions…sometimes its just the actions to help ignite the energy needed for one to be propelled and guided forwards in life.

 

So, let us talk for amount now about love coupled with that of kindness…of giving and of receiving. After all, I could not see the good in 2020 without both and in equally impactful proportions both love and kindness. For without them both I am quite sure the beast that was 2020 would have consumed me as I watched it consume so many other people around me.

 

I spoke a moment ago about love leading me to this place I now call home, but it did not stop there for me in 2020. No, it was accompanied by human kindness and human connections that by some divine guiding forced brought me here, it helped me to envision and define the Just Chill brand and it is here, that I, through the kindness of others am able to now give back to other people as freely as some people gave to me of themselves to me this year.

 

For me 2020 has been the spark (the Energy Synergy ©) that reminds me how to give and receive with humble humility. For me that has been both a great feat and a great gift, because for me, as an independent to a fault 50-year-old woman to be gifted has not always come easy. To be shown kindness in the way I received it in 2020 was the only thing that reminded me of what the entire time was most important, community, humanity, and love.

 

2020 was not without its pain or its suffering for me, it was a very painful time and at times I sat comfortably in the suffering that played hostess to my pain. But as I have written many times in the past…people are not meant to remain in a state of dis-ease all the time. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of self-pity for the sake of not being mature enough to see a way forward for ourselves. We must, if we plan to continue in our existence rise above that place and root a better foundation in the good, we have in our lives. For me anyway, that is how I see it; it is my story…my FULL story today and, yep, am sticking to it!

 

So, I ask you today to think back upon your own 2020 and ask yourselves these questions. What was the positives you were blessed with? What were your ‘thank you” moments? and how will you continue to learn from them and more importantly celebrate them in 2021? You have now 342 days to celebrate, to give, and to receive… please my friends make the best of it! As my dearly missed brother from another Mother Jake would say until next time Booyah!

 

And remember…always let your gratitude fuel your attitude! Ta ta for now!

 

Your Happiness Ambassador,

 

Carol 

 

 

Carol Hill is a mom, a long time nurse, certified professional  life and leadership development coach, a consultant, and Lead Happiness Ambassador and the owner/operator of Just Chill Custom Gifting By Carol.